Counterphobia
by lovelyemptyspace
Summary: Violet finds that some fears are not so easy to face.   Chp. 1 takes place between "Piggy, Piggy" and "Open House" .


There was a particular energy in the Murder House that had become restless over the passing weeks. It flowed from space to space, past the basement door and up the stairs. It would stop at the landing, put off by the unusual silence. Vivien and Ben Harmon could never deal with anything, and that is why they avoided the house. Violet Harmon was not like them. She was enticed by everything that repulsed them about the house.

Leah was perched next to Violet in their usual spots, pretending to watch the skaters, but instead they talked about the devil and the madness he had instilled upon them. The empty pool was the only place Violet could breathe ever since her incident. She could breathe in the smoke, and breathe out her words without caution. Indeed, the two had become close despite the fact it had been, more or less, solely based in sharing their recent darkness every night after school. Each and every time, Leah would mention the beautiful devil.

"The dreams have been getting worse. I'm back in that basement, and once I walk around the corner and see his face, I realize I'm dreaming." She shook her head and put out her cigarette in the cement. "But I can't wake up, and it happens to me all over again. I actually miss the other nightmares."

They both laughed a bit at her admission, which had been a rarity between them. Violet understood her fear of the recurring lucid nightmares, although the only recurring thing about hers was the house. Of all the feelings and images, she remembered the blood most vividly. As she lurked through the halls like one of the many ghosts, the thick mess followed at her heels.

"Are you staying at your dad's again?"

"No, he's back at the house."

Right on cue, a car horn sounded in the parking lot. Violet and Leah pretended Ben hadn't shown up. Neither of them had any desire to go home, to go to sleep, to dream.

The three of them sat at the table, Ben and Vivien appeared optimistic. Ben had taken a seat at the table like he'd never been kicked out, he and his wife maintained their regular appetite. They were experts at avoiding real problems. The house was all that mattered to them. Selling it, getting out of it, forgetting the unconscious issues it brought to the surface. Violet was, if anything, too aware of the fact that they had been using it as a scapegoat. Sure, strange, even frightening things had occurred there, but only a fool would be so oblivious as to blame a piece of architecture for what had gone wrong in their lives. Upon further reflection, she wasn't even sure if her dad was ultimately the one to blame. Her mother was just as uninterested in the reality of things, and of her perspective. Between the two of them alone, Ben was to blame, but when Violet entered the equation they were both equally responsible for her, for who she was, for the pain she found herself in.

"You're not eating anything." Vivien said.

"Not hungry. Pretty stuffed on bullshit."

Despite her absence in the last few weeks, Violet couldn't help but feel betrayed by their decision to sell the house without her consent. After all, she was the one who made the definitive remark, "we'll take it." She had falsely assumed her opinion had actually influenced them somehow, but she soon realized her feelings only reinforced theirs. At best, her insights were a bonus. Violet stormed out after her brilliant psychiatrist of a dad told her she was depressed. Indeed they would continue their "policy of benign neglect." Vivien wants to give in, to make her daughter feel better.

"Maybe we should stop trying to sell this place."

"I don't know. I mean, was that so much worse than usual?"

Ben Harmon disregarded it all, because he falsely assumed selling the house would fix everything, because he falsely assumed his daughter's feelings were based in spite and anger, and nothing else.

The first night in almost two weeks Violet spent at home, and she had picked up right where she left off. After dinner, she shut herself up in her room reading novels while listening to whatever came up on her device. She was drowning out the thoughts of her parents, of their impending divorce, and how they both could pretend it wasn't happening. And as much as she would hate to admit, she was upset that her father was home again, because that meant she had nowhere else to go. Violet would have to face her problems, even if her parents couldn't.

"Where have you been?" His voice came out from the shadows. It didn't startle her, and she began to wonder what possibly could after all she had been through.

Tate stood in front of her bedroom door, and she couldn't help but notice how tense he looked. His pale hands curled together at his side, the hurt blatantly drawn on his face. Violet wondered if she were even capable of lying to someone who was already so lost, who didn't even understand what he'd done, that he was dead. Would he be able to understand the truth? She couldn't give him an answer, no lies, no truth, just silence.

"It's okay, you know? I just missed you." He laughed it off. "Your maid caught me hanging around outside your window."

Violet didn't believe she was hearing such perfect lies come out of a person's mouth. Tate didn't even know he was lying, just like he didn't know he hunted down all those people. But still, every time she looked him in the eye, she would see something, a little darkness that made her skeptical of everything she knew about him.


End file.
